With that comp you should never have to tank heal other than a Heal/Gheal now and then and keeping Renew on them. They should be able to handle it letting you focus on the raid. You're probably not going to outheal a paladin most of the time until you're super geared, paladins are just the best healers for 10m hands down. Which means you should never be in Serenity. Always Sanc. You'd be surprised even how much tank support you supply with just PoH (assuming you target the right person to guarantee it hits the tank as well).

You should really look through my logs since that's the exact comp we run in 10m.

RE To Holy problems.

** I had the same issues. I wasnt comfortably able to heal heroics till around 90k mana buffed. I went & watched Aliena's (from her Youtube site), holy priest guide for cata. I followed her spec & healing style to the T & can now heal anything. ( My gear lvl is 351 atm) The realproblem I noticed, was I was using Flash heal. ITS A NO NO! Unless your tank goes down quickly, & Guardian spirit is on CD, then use it twice & Serenditpity should go off for a quick grt heal. other than that, Prayer of Mending, renew, charka, heal, & Circle of healing is all you should use. Go look up Aliena on youtube. She tells you all the secrets. Have fun & GL:>

I agree here. Haste vs. Mastery is a preference and highly based on your raid comp. But you really should go one way or the other. I started stacking Mastery and didn't see the benefit with our raids so I swapped to Haste and quite enjoy it

Don't want to get too off topic here, but to this end, most of my raiding is in 25s, and I can heal in a more specialized fashion and abuse EoL ticks. I do think that it's much harder to do so in 10s, so your results make sense.

As this pertains to the OP, chances are, based on your composition, you'll probably see better results from favoring Haste over Mastery. I'd still probably advise against all-out stacking Haste, but certainly trying to get up a bit more will be useful.

My spec is based on things I've read and what I thought might work based on how I've been healing in heroics. I didn't realize Renew was such a big deal now! I thought it was sort of in the same boat as PW:S, a "don't over use it, don't blanket the raid in it, that's bad" sort of way. So, I've really only been casting Renew to keep on the tank to refresh with a single-target heal.

I'm not sure that Armory is displaying the haste values correctly with the talent. Logged in last night outside of raid, I was around 13.5% haste looking at the Character display.

My raid leader is always telling me to stop stressing on the meters, haha... but I have little else to gauge my impact. I'm sort of the "healing leader" of our guild and I try to interpret where we have weaknesses and what we can do to improve. Of the healers mentioned in my OP, I have the lowest overhealing of our three. That's something I tend to be sort of hyper-aware of. I want to say I heal proactively with the big AOEs, but reactively otherwise with spot raid healing, or if the tank starts to spike (then it's AAAHH FlashFlashGHeal!!)

I'm going to mess around with my spec, make greater use of Renew (and not worry about Serendipity so much) for our next raid and see if I have an improvement. It may very well be that what I'm trying to make the spec do isn't what it's best at!

It depends a lot on your play style. I find renew only good in heroics, since I tend to avoid tank healing in raids like plague. As a result I have my spec tailored around not making renew better ^_^ I find myself bouncing between AoE and single target chakra all the time, depending on the fight. Here are fewlogs from our last week kills. My main heals are CoH and PoH, while most direct heals and, especially renew, comes way below my lightwell healing ^_^

As someone said, you should not be going for serendipity stacks at any time, instead you should be using them when you have them. And regarding your mana problems it all about gear and a bit about the way you heal. I was shocked how much my mana regen went up from HC geared to half raid geared. I would not suggest getting core though, unless you are completely against spending time on archeology trinket. Doll with tsunami will get you amazing mana regen even with crappy gear overall.

It depends a lot on your play style. I find renew only good in heroics, since I tend to avoid tank healing in raids like plague. As a result I have my spec tailored around not making renew better ^_^ I find myself bouncing between AoE and single target chakra all the time, depending on the fight. Here are fewlogs from our last week kills. My main heals are CoH and PoH, while most direct heals and, especially renew, comes way below my lightwell healing ^_^

As someone said, you should not be going for serendipity stacks at any time, instead you should be using them when you have them. And regarding your mana problems it all about gear and a bit about the way you heal. I was shocked how much my mana regen went up from HC geared to half raid geared. I would not suggest getting core though, unless you are completely against spending time on archeology trinket. Doll with tsunami will get you amazing mana regen even with crappy gear overall.

Well, with the trinkets, there's no way I can control whether or not I'll get Tyrande's Doll EVER, let alone any time soon... Core would be the next best option :x But I am searching!

From a gear perspective, you may want to run up to Twilight Highlands and do those first couple of quests to pick up the Beachsweeper wand from the Landgrab quest. It's a minor upgrade but it's a little bit of something while you're waiting for the right one to drop and it's REALLY easy to get. Also, if you haven't done it yet the Crucible of Carnage drops Gurgthock's Garish Gorebat, a decent healing mace, which couples nicely with the Apple-Bent Bough (obtainable for 950 Justice Points). Don't forget to add the +40 int chant to the off hand. If you can't get the Gorebat mace any more, assuming you are working on your TB rep, you could get Shimmering Morningstar from their quartermaster instead. Speaking of TB, they also have the Mandala of Stirring Patterns trinket for you. I'd like the Mandala more if it was throughput with a regen proc instead of the other way around, but it's still a decent trinket and it procs a LOT.

Yes, I know there are better gears available but these are all easily obtainable and don't require RNG for drops. Just invest a little time and they're yours.

Edit: I tried giving links for all of these things but the site yelled at me and said I haven't posted enough yet to have links in my posts. =)

Well, with the trinkets, there's no way I can control whether or not I'll get Tyrande's Doll EVER, let alone any time soon... Core would be the next best option :x But I am searching!

Based on my numbers, Core is better regen than Tyrande's Doll for a Holy Priest because of how Spirit scales for Holy Priests; the average 321 Spirit is worth more than the average 350 MP5. Of course, Tsunami is strictly superior to either as a static 400 Spirit.

That said, I still don't think aiming for the Core first is best because the Tear of Blood from Heroic Stone Core is close enough that you can use the Valor on upgrading another slot instead, perhaps a tier piece or the cloak instead.

Well one of the problems is that you're casting BH just for Serendipity. Don't think of Serendipity as necessary, rather just a nice bonus when you have it. You're wasting mana to gain cast time when you could just be pre-casting.

Lots of good advice in here but I wanted to really emphasize the above for you. Pre-casting is huge when done right. Flash Heal should really be a last resort. Also, If you're using Sanctuary alot, that's also a problem, it's pretty bad.

Lots of good advice in here but I wanted to really emphasize the above for you. Pre-casting is huge when done right. Flash Heal should really be a last resort. Also, If you're using Sanctuary alot, that's also a problem, it's pretty bad.

I agree. Furthering the discussion on HW:Sanc in another thread and based around your gear level i would totally avoid using sanctury. I only use renew on the tanks and then only sparingly. PoM only when you know there is going to be some aoe raid damage to get maximum bounces or if you need an instant quick heal on someone who just agro'd mag and serenity is down.

And replace those dps pieces for spirit gear. On the pants you reforged crit to mastery? i would change that to spirit

I find that if sometimes i click fiend to attack the boss to regen mana the idiot thing will come and stand next to me because the boss isnt attacking me and i have no dots on it. Make sure when you use fiend it is attacking the target. As soon as you click fiend spell click the attack button on your pet bar with boss targeted

Fast-forward to me now being a holy priest in our raids. I was able to gear up pretty fast, though I'm still 4-5 ilvls below my healing partners. However, I'm consistently 8-10% healing-done below BOTH of them in every single raid encounter (and a good 1-2k HPS lower as well). Magmaw, Double Dragons, Omnitron, the gamut. Even encounters where holy aoe healing is supposed to be ridiculously effective (Magmaw, for instance), I feel paltry. I seem to blow through my mana crazy fast (especially in AOE healing situations, though I've taken that as par for the course and time Chakra: Sanc for the best effect), and I use mana cooldowns fairly early in the fights to keep up (even using Hymn and Fiend together for max return, and Potion of Concentration later).

I have PoM bouncing off the tank on cooldown. I used CoH, Bindingx2, Chakra:Sanc and PoH for big AOE healing. I have Renew on both my tanks and keep it rolling with Heal when in Serenity state (most of the time). I feel like I'm using all of the spells and skills situationally correct and by the book, so why am I so terrible next to my other healers? The best HPS I've seen myself pull was a bare 8k HPS (and the r-shaman was easily 11k in the same fight, with hardly a dip in his mana). On average, I'm around 6.5k while my fellows are about 8k.

You're a priest, so you aren't going to get alot of HPS in the first place... however, you mastery does give you a 'heal-over-time' option with all your spells if you wish to invest into that....

If running OoM is your problem, you are probably overhealing (aka, panicking) during parts of the fight, and wasting mana on full health bars. A general rule I tell my priest when I'm running content is to keep me close to 80%, because my self healing will top me off, and will conserve her mana. Priest are the worst classes when it comes to mana regen, and overhealing mistakes will hurt you more than you think..

Also, stagger your CD's... a bad habit alot of players are used to doing is blowing them all at once. Don't do this during long fights... instead, stagger their use where you can keep clicking CD's at a time during an encounter. This way you will have a constant buff effect for your spells in order to get the best effective results from them...

Finally, get some of your Crit. Rating back... Your best attribute is the ability to do large, massive heals, at once, rather than over time. Spirit helps less than one would hope for a healing class, and you are better off having stats to improve your heals overall, rather than having a stat where you 'pray' that you can get decent mana back after throwing everything you have into the raid. Crit helps you heal for less cost, because it heals with for more effect, and the less you have to cast spells, the more effective you will be in raid...

Situationally, if you are still having mana troubles, stick close to the shaman/s in your raid and 'leech' their mana spring totems if they are out (which they damn better be imo). The totems do alot of Mana regen. for not just the shaman, but the whole raid. Help utilize it and stick with them on mechanics that have no range checks involved...

1. burst healing ie flash heal > gheal or poh must be reserved exclusively for oh shit moments, preferbly on the tank. This is really if you've been caught short (you should never get to this point)

2. You should hot the tank and use chakra to roll your renew + heal. This is sufficient to "break even" with 90% of dungeon damage incoming on the tank while breaking even with your mana. Ideally at this point you should have enough spirit so that Heal doesn't reduce your mana more than 1% accounting for regen. Sometimes alternate gheal with heal while rolling those hots if the tank drops below 75%. Keeping the tank TOPPED OFF via this means you gain bags of time when dps get hurt.

The key point with Heal is you need to use it ALL the time, thats right NO breaks. It should be used even if someone is 95% health, because it is so efficient. One of the big mistakes I see with holy priest is that they let health get a bit low before healing them up thinking "this is efficient", its not, it forces you into using more expensive heals when you could have calmly just kept spamming heal relentlessly early on.

Using heal spam to roll renews is the most efficient healing cycle you can do, and the most fundamental one for holy priest. Then when shit *really* happens you have almost full mana to deal with it via binding heal, flash heal then a whopping great POH or Gheal.

** I had the same issues. I wasnt comfortably able to heal heroics till around 90k mana buffed.

I had about 80k and I was healing chain pull heroics without a problem using the above tactics. Spirit stacking until heal barely costs mana, and ensuring obsessive topping off using heal buys you so much time to use expensive heals its not even funny. I did several raid bosses with 85k mana while topping healing meters (this isn't epeen, its pointing out I had the mana spare to do it still) - don't underestimate spirit and cycles of efficient then burst healing.

Finally, get some of your Crit. Rating back...

Using chakra, heal and chastise puts you into a state where your next heals have a higher critical strike chance, I feel this "crit on demand" style of play is more mana efficient especially if you reforged crit to spirit.

For the most part I'm using Heal and Renew for single heals, and as above, PoM on cooldown. I only use Flash if the tank is taking steady & heavy damage, and I do a Flash 2x for Serendipity and a GHeal to get them up.

See, this is a big problem I see from healers in general. You're letting the tank drop that far down so your only choice is to do that. You could chastise and gheal earlier on for a much bigger mana saving and a crit gheal.

Ultimately it's DPS or the tank that can make a priest look bad sometimes. Sometimes you'll get pugs that make you look like the world's worst healer, and don't take this to heart (I have raid healed since the start of TBC till now on my priest) and I've seen this a lot. Be happy, confident and know that sometimes... its worth letting that fucking DK die for constantly using unholy frenzy while standing in fire.

Just to sooth you a bit more, don't rely on Meters too much.
I've been in raids where we ended up having abit too much healing and so we switched a healer to dps. We picked the top meter healers to stay healing and the lowest to go dps.
We wiped several times before we switched one of the higher HPS's with the lowest and downed the boss the next attempt.
You may be at the bottom, but you can also be doing the smartest heals and keeping essential people alive over un-essential people.

Friends: Will help you move.
Best Friends: Will help you move the Bodies

You're a priest, so you aren't going to get alot of HPS in the first place... however, you mastery does give you a 'heal-over-time' option with all your spells if you wish to invest into that....

Wrong. Priests are one of the best healers out there right now with only Paladins really being on top of them in 10m raids.

If running OoM is your problem, you are probably overhealing (aka, panicking) during parts of the fight, and wasting mana on full health bars. A general rule I tell my priest when I'm running content is to keep me close to 80%, because my self healing will top me off, and will conserve her mana. Priest are the worst classes when it comes to mana regen, and overhealing mistakes will hurt you more than you think..

I really don't agree that a tank should be sitting at 80%, they should be at 100% if possible. Just don't use your high mana cost spells at this point, switch to Heal instead.

Also, stagger your CD's... a bad habit alot of players are used to doing is blowing them all at once. Don't do this during long fights... instead, stagger their use where you can keep clicking CD's at a time during an encounter. This way you will have a constant buff effect for your spells in order to get the best effective results from them...

Wrong. Always use Fiend then Hymn of Hope because you are going to get far more mana back from your fiend by doing this due to the 15% more mana buff you get from Hymn. Sure you can pot later on in the fight, but always use those together whenever possible (or if another Priest uses Hymn).

Finally, get some of your Crit. Rating back... Your best attribute is the ability to do large, massive heals, at once, rather than over time. Spirit helps less than one would hope for a healing class, and you are better off having stats to improve your heals overall, rather than having a stat where you 'pray' that you can get decent mana back after throwing everything you have into the raid. Crit helps you heal for less cost, because it heals with for more effect, and the less you have to cast spells, the more effective you will be in raid...

Very very wrong. Crit is bad bad bad for Holy. Do not take it whenever you can. Do not forge for it. Forge it to Spirit if the gear has no Spirit or Haste/Mastery. This is just so wrong.

Situationally, if you are still having mana troubles, stick close to the shaman/s in your raid and 'leech' their mana spring totems if they are out (which they damn better be imo). The totems do alot of Mana regen. for not just the shaman, but the whole raid. Help utilize it and stick with them on mechanics that have no range checks involved...

It's a 40yd range so you really don't have to try to stick next to them. And I don't think his comp has a Shaman anyways.

You should really do some research before telling a Priest how to play because most of what you said is wrong on so many levels :s

Get rid of that crit gear. Even if you reforge it, I believe 60% of it still remains. And there are many alternatives from 5man heroic and later, valor. As far as mastery vs. haste goes, you can choose either. I like haste myself, and I think a lot of people prefer it for 10mans, but I could be wrong.

Personally, I wouldn't really go too crazy with the renews in 10man. Maybe it's better than I give it credit for, but you're relying on your other healers not to just heal to 100% whoever you renew. Which will generally happen - or at least it does to me. However, renew is excellent for the fact that you can cast and run. I also like to keep it up on tanks whenever I can, because it's cheap and unlikely for it to overheal as much on them. It is also buffed by sanctuary chakra, which you should almost always be using anyways.

Constantly yell at your guild to hit the lightwell. Make sure it is placed well, and that they all know it has a 20-yd range, 6 second duration etc. Tell them when you cast it and where. Don't let people waste charges - the lightwell is almost like a free gheal, so it's pretty bad to waste a charge.

As for using flash heal on tanks, this should almost never be done. This is why you have Guardian Spirit. If you get nervous, use it. Its cooldown is short enough that it can be used multiple times per fight. Other than that, just GHeal and have faith in your tank healers; alternatively, you can PoM if the bounces will be used. Binding Heal, on the other hand, is excellent, but it still costs a decent amount of mana. Further, if you're at 100% because of BHeal and are prayer of healing your own group, it's simply a waste of heals. BHeal should generally be reserved for when it's just you and one other who needs healing, or at times where you need huge thoroughput and have the mana to do so (i.e. Maloriak, Council, or Cho'gall last phase. If you have the mana, BHeal is excellent to spam, but make sure to use the serendipity too). Oh, and BHeal is good for the Caustic Slimes on Chimaeron.

You shouldn't have mana problems if you stop using FHeal, but if you continue to have problems, make sure you use concentration potions. They provide 22k mana as opposed to 10k; just make sure the other healers know what's up. Make sure that you're shadow-fiending as many times as possible during a fight; use shadow fiend before any other mana cooldown, then hymn of hope with your second shadowfiend as opposed to your first. Make sure any shamans in your raid aren't mana-tiding at bad times for you. Again, make sure people are using the lightwell because it will help your mana out tons. Hopefully you're flasking and getting a food buff (use int, dont use spirit as a crutch). Advise your shaman to get the Darkmoon Card: Tsunami and Jar of Ancient Remedies, as these will improve his/her mana tide totem. If you are still having troubles, it probably has to be because your raid members are failing at the mechanics. Make sure you know the mechanics too, so you know what needs to be interrupted, etc and you can yell at them.

As for which spells to use when, well, you should be able to reason that out. Periods where the group is hit in rapid succession, PoM is amazing and should, when possible, be pre-casted once and then cast again (when Magmaw is spewing out fire to the whole raid; when Theralion drops a void zone onto ranged; when Magmatron does incineration protocol or whatever; and the last phase of Cho'gall). Some other times it will seem like a great idea to cast PoM, but it will really only perform decently, such as Maloriak's fire spewing or Chimaeron's feud. These are times of huge AoE damage, but they instantly hit the whole raid and so PoM doesn't have time to bounce. It's important to keep this in mind. Any time that 3 or 4+ people can benefit from your AoE heals, keep circle on cooldown and hit groups 1 and 2 alternating with prayer (if you hit one group twice in a row, the prayer glyph hot will overwrite itself and thus waste heals; not hugely significant though). Composing your groups so that you can actually hit all group members with each prayer is super important, and it's fairly simple to do a melee/tanks and then ranged group. Other than all of this, I've already spoken on FHeal, BHeal and Renew. GHeal is excellent to use on the raid as well; often people will say to only use Heal but GHeal's efficiency is very similar - you only need to be careful of overhealing with it or running oom with it. Start using heal instead if you're ever worried about going oom, but make sure you're thinking in the long run in this regard.

Are you / your party- & raidmember using the Lightwell? if no, you should drop the glyph.

It would be better to relentlessly kick and scream and whine (and throw a tantrum if you have to--okay not really, they might treat you like a child), trying to convince your raid members to click the Lightwell than to remove the glyph. I have a /yell LIGHTWELL IS DOWN! CLICK IT!!!! macro binded to my Lightwell key and spam it often in the raid. Without ever changing my healing style, my healing on the meters went from bottom of the 3 healers straight up to the top while at the same time working wonders for my mana problems.

Especially for Magmaw, if you're doing the all ranged stacked up strategy, moving from side to side with each pillar of flame, just put a lightwell right in the middle. The beauty of Lightwell is that people can use it on the move or while casting. So when my CoH and PoM is on cd and I have to run, I just let my raid members know that Lightwell is always there.